The return of winter as we used to know it aimed high and struck hard. It hit our roofs and sank our hearts. Despair and agony were all around us, while we lay wet wet wet.

Stories vary from my friend having to use a bucket till spring to the famous wife of national poet Dinescu having been hit by an icicle precariously hanging from one particularly evil roof.

We are not the roof of the world, yet in some places it snows as if we were in the Himalayas. Cars and trains are snowed in, as they are every December, a situation which means that perhaps we are not incompetent, but actually meant to use vehicles on sleighs and not on wheels. Like Santa.

It is now that people remember to look up, instead of just staring at their feet, instinctively fearing dog bites. They look up not due to higher hopes, but fearing falling icicles.